Edward Burns and model Christy Turlington Burns attend the premiere of 'No Woman No Cry' during the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival at Village East Cinema on April 24, 2010
source daylife.com and gettyimages.com

The documentary is a one-hour exposé on the various barriers -– whether cultural, political, legal or geographical -– women face in accessing quality reproductive health care in the U.S., as well as Tanzania, Bangledesh and Guatemala. The film also includes intimate home videos of a plump and pregnant Christy –- including haunting footage of her hemorrhage while giving birth to her first child, shot by husband Ed Burns.
That would be the same Ed Burns who also has a film showing at the festival. Burns is an old hand at the festival circuit; his directorial debut “Brothers McMullan” won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1995 and his most recent work, “Nice Guy Johnny,” is his fifth film at Tribeca. Turlington says she and her husband plotted out a schedule two years ago of how both could film their project concurrently. “Thankfully, Eddie does all of his movies in New York,” she said.
Turlington managed to squeeze in some time to talk to Speakeasy about her directorial debut, which she hopes will get a limited theatrical release around September, and outspending her husband on their respective films.

The Wall Street Journal: You were bouncing around the world making this documentary. What was filming like?
We first filmed in Bangladesh. We had a local producer scout before we got there and we did our research by talking to experts and looking into local NGO programs. We identified a healthcare worker first and through her, found the pregnant women we wanted to follow. We actually followed a few women in each country [but the documentary ends up focusing on one woman per country].You broke the fourth wall when your crew drove one of the pregnant women to the hospital. What was that like?
Well there was no way that under my watch I would let a woman die. There was a teenage girl in Tanzania and she had to have an emergency C section, so we drove her to the hospital. We watched the entire surgery. Right after the surgery she left the hospital because the conditions were just awful — there were three women to a bed. In fact, many women die after they get home because of infection and other complications, especially because it’s unlikely that they’ll go back to the hospital.I bet it helped to have a filmmaker husband.
We made such different kinds of movies that I wasn’t initially sure how much he could be helpful. He could certainly understand the commitment of it and how film takes over your life. I actually found my producer through him. We edited side by side. That’s where Eddie really became helpful -– the handful of us who were working on the film every day were too close to it. He was an outside, objective male perspective, and helped us a lot with developing the dramatic arc.The scope of your films couldn’t be any more different.
My film was a lot more expensive than Eddie’s film. It took two years to make. His film was done on the fly. Eddie’s really mastered the art of a low-budget film. He shoots for like 18 days and does everything in-house. He owns his camera, which saves a lot of money by not renting equipment.What do you like most about Ed’s film?
Eddie’s gotten some criticism over the years that he always makes his movies the same kind of way, but he doesn’t let other people get him down. The film is very much about that. He’s a positive person, he doesn’t ever leave people feeling sad or defeated.You ended up creating a very personal film with the home footage of your pregnancy. Were you confidant in putting that in?
I always planned on narrating it, but I wasn’t always convinced that I belonged in the story. What should my voice be? Am I an expert or a mom? But my pregnancy was a personal experience that really opened my whole world to understanding the problems with reproductive health care. We didn’t start looking at the home video footage until the end. But it’s totally real footage. Eddie filmed the birth and kept the camera rolling during the hemorrhage –- I think it was the only way he could keep calm.